“I don’t want to wait in vain
For your love.”
– “Waiting in Vain,” Bob Marley
By Randall Grantham
Community Columnist
A few weeks ago, I wrote about security checkpoints and their occasional overuse. I agree that there is a need for enhanced security at some places and admit I’m over-sensitive about excessive use because of my titanium hip, which causes me to be pulled out of line every time.
A recent episode in one of the courthouses I frequent made me wonder what guards have to put up with and what kinds of weird stuff they see. It’s bad enough in Dade City that guards wear gloves to grab people’s stinky shoes out of the machine, but it is more interesting in New Port Richey.
I was behind a squat, middle-aged woman, who after emptying the pockets of her jeans still beeped when she walked through the checkpoint.
“Oh, it must be this,” she said as she took off her baseball cap and removed a piece of tinfoil that had previously been lining the top of it.
The guards and I looked at each other, shaking our heads. But the fact that they were unfazed by this woman who apparently believed the tinfoil lining might protect her — from what, aliens or the government’s secret mind control experiments — made me think.
So I asked officers manning various security points what kind of weird or funny stuff they see while X-raying people’s stuff all day and checking them out if they beep when walking through the metal detectors. It was a learning experience.
Piercings obviously rate high on the list. Just as my bionic hip sets off the machines, people with enough metal objects, inserted in various locations on their body, will also cause quite a ruckus.
Verifying the fact that they are, in fact, piercings and not some other sort of metal can be, shall we say, challenging in some cases.
One time, a metal container caught the attention of a screener in Tampa. After questioning the woman whose purse it was in, they found it contained the ashes of her father. And, weirdly dissimilar from my tinfoil lady in New Port Richey, there is the homeless guy who wraps himself in barbed wire and regularly visits the courthouses in Tampa. He’s explained that it’s just his “fashion statement.”
Speaking of fashion statements, there was a guy in Tampa who set off the walk-through alarm. As the guard passed the wand across his lower torso and asked him to raise his shirt to see the belt buckle, the guard was stunned to see that the man had his fly open and his “junk” hanging out! He was told to take that back out to his car.
But, after extensive interviews and research, the overall winner is … drum roll, please … women with battery-powered sex toys in their purses. You might think that they wouldn’t show up because they’re plastic or rubber, but deputies see the batteries and the wires and have to ask the owner what it is.
They are, to say the least, embarrassed in having to pull them out and dispel any concern. Guards, however, after establishing that there is no threat from that “friendly” weapon, spend more time wondering why these gals are carrying the things around in the first place.
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2009 RCG
